Hitting the Klan Where It Hurts

In 1981 a young black man named Michael Donald was kidnaped as he walked to a store in Mobile, Ala. Soon after, his badly beaten and strangled body was found hanging from a tree in a racially mixed neighborhood. In 1984 two men who were members of the United Klans of America, the largest of the Ku Klux Klan organizations, were convicted of his murder. One was sentenced to death, the other to life imprisonment. Now, in what is seen as a landmark civil case, a federal jury has held the United Klans of America and six of its current and former members liable for Donald’s death. The jury also has awarded Donald’s family $7 million in damages.

The assets of the United Klans of America and other defendants in the case probably amount to only a tiny fraction of these damages. The likelihood is that the judgment will effectively put the 2,500-member organization out of business. That was precisely the purpose of the suit. Morris Dees, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said his aim was to establish that all Klan chapters can be held civilly liable along with their members for criminal actions. “They may get away with killing and maiming here, there and yonder,� Dees said after the verdict was returned, “but they’re going to have to know that their houses are at stake, that their jobs are at stake and their property is at stake when they hurt somebody.�

Why was Michael Donald killed? In a repentant statement to the court, one of the men convicted of the crime said that Donald was a random victim, abducted and slain only to demonstrate the strength of the Klan in Alabama and to intimidate blacks from serving on juries. The jury that held the United Klans of America liable in the death of Donald was, as it happens, composed only of whites. It heard testimony of a chilling atrocity. Its precedent-setting award should go a long way toward preventing other atrocities.